Posted By Lindsay on July 29, 2009
Ok, last wedding post, I promise. I figured you guys would want to see the final outcome of all this hard work, right? Well, it was perfect, to say the least. From the cupcakes to the weather to the flowers, I couldn’t have asked for more. Sometimes I need to look at these pictures just to remind myself it really did happen, and wasn’t just a dream. Ok, ok, that was cheesy. Sorry. But true. (And even if you really could care less about our wedding pictures, be sure to scroll to the bottom of this post. We’re giving away something pretty darn cool and you definitely want to get in on it!)
Our ‘topper’ was actually an heirloom – the same wedding topper my grandparents used over 50 years ago. It was our ‘something old’ and it meant so much to me and my family to be able to include it.
Yes, we actually had a cupcake cutting.
Kitty was there too (of course!) She watched the whole ceremony from the bedroom window, and served as our unofficial ring-bearer.
We can’t say enough great things about our photographers, R.J. and Nicole Kern of kern-photo.com. They’ve got amazing skill and the images they took still take my breath away. Be sure to check out their blog post for a super-cool slideshow set to our (slightly ‘alternative’) wedding song. And, you know, if you happen to need a photographer in Colorado, definitely give them a call. :)
*End shameless plug*
And now, to the giveaway part….
You see, as our wedding favors, we had postcards printed with the final wedding cupcake recipes. I figured, if the cupcakes were as successful as I hoped they would be, everyone at the wedding would want the recipes. And I didn’t want to deal with mailing/emailing recipes to everyone after the fact (ok ok so it was a tiny bit selfish – buy hey, give me a break!). The cards turned out beautifully, we packaged them in dainty glassine envelopes and passed them out at the end of the reception.
Thing is, we ordered way to many. Like, hundreds more than we really needed (not my fault – the printer offered either 100, or 250. Since 100 wasn’t quite enough, we had to order 250.) So now we have a box full of recipe cards without a home.
Lucky you.
I wondered who else would enjoy these lovely recipe cards? Since I can’t bring myself to recycle their pretty patterned goodness, why not share them with our readers, who love cupcakes almost as much as we do! What a wonderful idea!
So, I’m offering to send you a pack of our recipe cards, all fancy and printed in full color. I’ll even pay for the stamp. Just send me your address. You’ll get the recipes (plus high altitude adjustments) for three of our all-time favorite cupcake recipes, Strawberry Filled Lemon Cupcakes, Mexican Hot Chocolate Cupcakes, and Chocolate Almond Cupcakes.
I have no idea how many people will actually take me up on this offer, so I do have to mention this is first come first serve. I’ve got a lot, but when they’re gone, they’re gone.
UPDATE: Wow. What a response. I am now completely out of recipe cards! I am truly humbled by your kind words for us, this blog, our wedding, and cupcakes in general. I knew I had an amazing group of readers, but I never expected this! You all rock. Truly! Sorry for those who may not have gotten a set. I’ll be posting links to the actual recipes shortly and may even post a pdf version of the cards you can print yourself if you’d like. Thank you once again! :)
Posted By Lindsay on July 22, 2009
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming. Ok, ok, so there might be *one* more wedding post, but I have no intentions of turning this into a wedding blog or anything. I promise. :) And just so you know – it’s been over 3 weeks since I last baked a cupcake. I needed a bit of recover time, sure, but I’m beginning to get antsy. The flavor ideas are flowing, and my sugar-cravings grow stronger by the day. So don’t be surprised if there are some delicious new cupcake recipes showing up in the near future. Lots of them.
But we’re not talking cupcakes now. We’re talking dinner. These tacos are perfect for a hot summer evening. Get yourself a rotisserie chicken, and other than heating the tortillas, there is absolutely no heat or cooking involved. And that can be done in the microwave.
We are thoroughly enjoying the summer produce, and trying to make the most of it while it’s still here. This recipe features fresh summer corn and ripe red tomatoes. Topped with a sprinkle of tangy feta cheese, it’s a keeper, that’s for sure.
And speaking of rotisserie chickens, we’ve been getting them quite a bit lately. Hard to pass up when they are cheaper than an entire uncooked chicken of a pack of chicken breasts, and oh so easy when dinnertime comes around. We’ve been freezing the carcasses with the intention of making homemade broth, but haven’t done it yet. There are currently 3 chicken carcasses in our freezer, sealed in ziplocks, just waiting. Kind of creepy actually. We’ll have to deal with that soon…
Soft Tacos With Chicken and Tomato-Corn Salsa
Ingredients:
1/2 small red or white onion, finely chopped
1 ear of corn, steamed for five minutes
1 pound ripe tomatoes, finely chopped
1 to 3 jalapeño or serrano peppers (to taste), seeded if desired and minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
Salt to taste
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, poached and shredded (about 2 cups)
8 corn tortillas
1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco or feta cheese
Directions:
Place the chopped onion in a small bowl, and cover with cold water. Let sit for five minutes, then drain and rinse with cold water. Drain on paper towels. Cut the kernels off the steamed ear of corn.
Toss together the tomatoes, minced chiles, cilantro, onion and steamed corn. Season to taste with salt, and add up to 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice. Place the shredded chicken in a bowl, and season with 1 tablespoon lime juice and salt to taste.
Heat the tortillas. Wrap in aluminum foil, and heat through in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes; or heat through one at a time in a dry skillet over medium-high heat until flexible. Place one or two on each plate, top with shredded chicken and a generous spoonful of the salsa, and sprinkle some cheese on top. Serve, passing additional salsa if there is any at the table.
Posted By Lindsay on July 16, 2009
Before you go calling me certifiably insane, let me explain one thing: I am a stress baker. To-do list getting out of control? I make cinnamon rolls. Feeling anxious over a big deadline? Time to bake cookies. Lots of cookies. It’s how I deal with my stress. (Lucky for us, Taylor is a stress cleaner. So when we both get stressed we end up with blueberry pie and a spotless toilet. Pretty good deal, I’d say!). Anyway, I figured, the day before my wedding, I’m probably going to be pretty darn stressed. Sounds like a perfect time to spend the. entire. day. baking.
To clarify, we baked these babies, all 300+ of them, the day before the wedding. The ovens went on at 8 in the morning, and didn’t turn off until 4:30 that afternoon. I debated back and forth over whether I should do more in advance. Like make all the cupcakes over the course of the week and freeze them. But freshness is far too important to me. I was able to do a few things in advance, like making the strawberry jam for the lemon cupcakes, and cut and shape all the marzipan toppers. But the rest of it, all the batter, baking, frosting and decorating, was done on Friday.
How DID we do it, exactly? I’ve had many people ask me just that. I’ve even heard from a few who are as crazy as I am and planning on baking their own wedding cupcakes, wondering how I dealt with things like storage. So I’m going to share my secrets, or, not so much secrets as things I learned by messing up a few times first. Hopefully you can make the most of my mistakes and experiments, save yourself some time. :)
Lesson #1: Get help. Good help. But not too much help (you know that phrase too many cooks in the kitchen? they mean it). I was lucky enough to have a fabulous team of assistants, without whom, well, I’d probably still be baking. A huge thank you to Mom, Grandma, Aunt Lynn, Uncle Mike, and Auntie Sal for all their help. And everyone else who stopped by periodically throughout the day to perform, ahem, “quality control.” Lucky for them we had a few rejects to give away otherwise they might have been disappointed.
Lesson #2: Dress appropriately. We had an unfortunate ‘incident’ involving a bit too much pressure built up in the cocoa powder container. And, well… you can guess what happened next.
Cocoa explosion. Mike proudly wore his chocolately “badge of honor” for the rest of the day.
Lesson #3: Shop in bulk. Have you ever wondered who on earth buys those massive bags of powdered sugar at Costco? Turns out, we do.
That’s 50 pounds right there. And we used most of it. Plus 8 pounds of butter, 12 pounds of flour, 14 cans of coconut milk, and, well, you get the point. It was quite the mathematical headache to try and figure out just HOW MUCH of everything we were really going to need (thank you 6th grade math!). We only ran out of flour and almond extract, but luckily had plenty of willing volunteers to run into town and replenish our stock throughout the day.
Lesson #4: Cupcake storage. This was probably our biggest issue of all. I mean, how/where/what do you use to store 300 cupcakes?
Our first dilemma was whether or not the cupcakes should be stored in airtight containers. As it is extremely dry in Colorado (think, like, -10% humidity), we didn’t want the one day layover to completely suck all moisture out of our cupcakes. Anyone who has had a dry cupcake knows why.
However, a quick test solved that problem for us:
The cupcake on the left was stored in an airtight container. The cupcake on the right was not. While the frosting and cake stayed delectably moist, the unfortunate decoration didn’t fare so well.
On to plan B. We needed something large. Something contained so no dust or critters (or sneaky dads) could break into them during the night. Contained but yet not airtight. We needed something we could stack, and something that would hold the cupcakes securely.
Bakery boxes turned out to be the perfect solution. We found a handful of sheet cake boxes that came with cupcake inserts, perfect for holding two dozen cupcakes securely in place. Voila! The box was just enough to keep the cupcakes moist, but not airtight so the decorations stayed perky. We filled 15 of these buggers full of cupcakes.
Another important aspect of this whole thing was the stand. Ever since I decided to bake my own cupcakes for the wedding (meaning, since the day we got engaged), I’d been scouring the net for the perfect cupcake stand. My criteria? Big enough to hold a lot. Simple. Elegant. Sturdy. Affordable. Not too much to ask, right? Apparently it was, as I couldn’t find a single stand that I loved. I found a few good ones, but they cost a few hundred dollars. I found plenty of cheap plastic ones and ones with frilly borders, and even a few flimsy looking cardboard ones. Not even close.
Lucky for me I have a pretty talented Dad. He did, after all, build half our house, so I figured he could handle a cupcake stand.
I purchased some masonite cake boards for each layer in 6 different diameters. Then Dad assembled it – using a single metal pole (or pipe or rebar or something) through the middle of each round, and a 4″ length of white pvc pipe to separate each layer. All affixed to the top of a lazy suzan (look! it spins!). With a fresh coat of white spray paint, and a dainty turquoise ribbon trim around the edges, we had ourselves the perfect cupcake stand. All for less than $60.
Posted By Lindsay on July 10, 2009
One of the main challenges in the baking of the cupcake wedding cake (as if baking 300 cupcakes in one day wasn’t challenging enough) was the fact that we were doing it at 7,300 feet. And when all the recipes were tested at a measly 600 feet, well, I knew the altitude was going to be an issue. How big of an issue, I wasn’t sure, but I knew some adjustments would need to be made.
So as soon as we got to Colorado (after a long and tiring 20 hour drive with a carload of stuff, a cat, and my mangled laptop that we managed to run over somewhere along the way) we immediately started baking, and didn’t stop for the next week and a half.
Batch #1: I immediately cut the leavening in half. From my previous experiments, I knew this alone would make a huge difference. We also used high altitude flour for all our baking, which (as I just learned), has a higher protein content than regular all-purpose flour. It’s like if all-purpose flour and bread flour had a baby. For baking at high altitude, extra protein is needed as it gives more structure and strength to your cake. Weak batter will rise too quickly in the thin mountain air, and then collapse under it’s own weight. It is for this reason you want to reduce the leavening, even though it may seem counter intuitive. Less leavening causes the batter to rise more slowly, giving it time to build a structure capable of supporting itself. And that’s a good thing.
Another variable to take into consideration is the oven. We figured (since we were baking 300 cupcakes), that using the convection oven would allow us to bake more at once. So for this first batch, we had 3 rows of cupcakes. Turns out the convection oven doesn’t bake quite as evenly as you would think, and the cupcakes on the bottom row developed odd shaped bulges. Mutant cupcakes. Not pretty, even with frosting. So we scrapped that idea, adjusted the racks, and baked two rows at a time from then on.
We took good notes. Very scientific.
Second batch of almond cupcakes, looking pretty as ever. Same adjustments, just baked on two oven levels instead of three.
The lemon cupcakes went so smoothly we only had to bake 6 of them. We made the exact same adjustments here, cutting the leavening (baking powder and baking soda) in half and using high altitude flour.
When we got to the Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes, however, it was a completely different story. Our first batch didn’t rise enough. Our second batch rose too quickly and then sunk. But the third batch, well, the third batch turned out just right.
Contrary to this image, they actually rose nicely. These pretty green cupcake cups are significantly taller than the white ones. Pay attention to the beautiful domes on these, and just ignore the cracks (there’s always something about this recipe…) This batch was the clear winner, so we recorded the adjustments and moved on with other wedding endeavors. Funny thing is, we made the same exact adjustments on the actual wedding cupcakes, and they came out more like the previous two batches. Sink, sank, sunk. Maybe it was just a fluke, and this batch got lucky. Good thing for us that slightly sunken cupcakes can easily be disguised by more frosting. No one even noticed. Sneaky sneaky.
The final (albeit probably arbitrary) adjustments we made for the Hot Chocolate Cupcakes included cutting the leavening in half, adding 1 teaspoon of vinegar, adding 1 tablespoon of flour, and subtracting 1 tablespoon of sugar. Whether it actually did anything or not I can’t say. But they sure tasted good.
Conclusion? Cupcakes are probably a pretty safe bet for high altitude baking, for the simple reason I mentioned above: sunken cupcakes mean more frosting, and that’s never a bad thing.
So if you are one of the lucky few to live with your head in the clouds and looking for some fail-safe high altitude baking tricks, I don’t have them for you. But, I’d suggest first simply cutting the leavening in your recipes (for us, at 7,300 feet, half seemed to do the trick, but you should adjust accordingly depending on just how high you are). You might get lucky. If that doesn’t work, well, make some extra frosting, and no one will ever know the difference.
And, in case you were wondering, I’ve got myself a pretty new laptop, you know, to replace the one we RAN OVER WITH OUR CAR. Oy.
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